Arts and Humanities

By Saran S.

About the Book:
Arts and humanities are imagined as inseparable and integrated activities. Both challenge and enlarge our basic human capacities for interpretation and evaluation. In the arena of literary studies, there is a growing academic interest for the study of Arts and Humanities across the world. What may rightfully be expected of art is to depend on the nature of the entity itself. Understanding possible applications of art helps to determine its identity. The recent pursuit for mapping the mosaics including that of literary and culture studies makes it interesting to interrogate transnational cultures formation of canons and deconstruction of stereotypes. Writing has always been powerful space of discourse to address the varied areas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pencil
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354580444

Book preview

Arts and Humanities

BY

Saran S

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ISBN 9789354580444

© Saran S 2021

Published in India 2021 by Pencil

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DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Publisher.

Author biography

Saran S (MA, Ph. D.) is a writer, Poet, Nature Activist, Teacher and Research Scholar. He has completed his Doctoral Research from Department of English, M. S. University in 2020. His areas are Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Psychoanalytical Studies and Eco Studies. He is the author of a number of articles published in various national and international journals as well as four academic books on topics of current interest like English Language, Film Studies, Partition Studies and Cultural Studies. He also authored a collection of poems and short stories. He also edited eleven international books. He is the chief editor of Edit Academic and also advisory board member in The Creative Launcher , an international, open access, peer reviewed refereed, e-journal in English (UGC approved).

Contents

A Feminist Deconstruction of the Corporeal View Representation of Disability in Aphra Behn's 'The Dumb Virgin'

A Diachronic Study of the Recurrence of Nature in Literature and Art as a Revisionist Narrative Strategy

Ecological Consciousness as Depicted in Selected Indian English Poetry of the 20th Century

Re-defining the dialectics of marriage A critical analysis of Jaishree Misra's Novels

The Rise of a New Woman A Study on Khaled Hosseini's 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'

'Will' for Life A Study of Schopenhauer's 'Theory of Will' and its representation in 'Life is Beautiful'

Stress and Academic Performance among Students

Covid-19 and Educational System

In Delhi with Dalrymple A Spatial Reading of the 'Cityscape'

Alternatives Priorities and Perspectives in Khaled Hosseine's 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'

Rhetoric of Gender in Everyday Life

Popular Bollywood Movies A Study on Representations, Trends and Shifts

Diaspora and Cultural Displacement in V.S. Naipaul's Novels with Special Reference to 'The Mimic Men'

Psychoanalytic Re-reading of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Fall of the House of Usher'

Psychoanalytic Interpretation in the novel 'The God of Small Things'

Casteism in Nineteenth Century of Rural India with Reference to Satyajit Ray's Film 'Sadgati'

Psychoanalysis and Psychology in the Novel 'Beloved'

The Impact of Feminist Women in BRIDA by Paulo Coelho

Characteristics of Subaltern in Bama's 'Sangati'

Introduction

A rts and humanities are imagined as inseparable and integrated activities. Both challenge and enlarge our basic human capacities for interpretation and evaluation. In the arena of literary studies, there is a growing academic interest for the study of Arts and Humanities across the world. What may rightfully be expected of art is to depend on the nature of the entity itself. Understanding possible applications of art helps to determine its identity. The recent pursuit for mapping the mosaics including that of literary and culture studies makes it interesting to interrogate transnational cultures formation of canons and deconstruction of stereotypes.

Writing has always been powerful space of discourse to address the varied areas. The articles in this book gives not only an insight, but rather a formative investigation into the ways in which works of art intersect with issues of broader humanistic concern. The articles intend to explore the intricate issues in the field of Art and Humanities. The book will serve the purpose of students, scholars and faculty to register the various trends in this area. Ways of developing basic tools of analysis in the area projects particular cultural status, construct systems of value, and negotiate social and ethical dilemmas which will develop a sense of intellectual responsibility towards the environment where one belong to.

The book is designed as a series of articles, spanning to twenty one numbers by academicians, critics and creative writers, whose works reflect on ground-breaking genres, themes and techniques that define the field of Art and Humanities. From the time of Renaissance until the early twentieth century little is said about humanism as being a part of art. Although it is common in literary appreciation to read back to the text from notions about what art is supposed to do the research papers in this book turns on the aesthetic dimension that points to the power of art and its promising functionality in fostering a common humanity. Despite the onslaught of pandemic and its apparent limitations, the book provides critiques in expanding artistic and humanistic view points to the readers.

A

Feminist Deconstruction of the Corporeal View Representation of Disability in Aphra Behn's 'The Dumb Virgin'

Dr. Prathibha P.

Assistant Professor, Centre for Research Department of English

Providence Women’s College, University of Calicut, Kerala

[e-mail]

Abstract

During the Restoration age, the prevalent medical practice was to isolate and sequestrate the mentally disabled, the indigent and marginalized by producing asylums for these groups. The misogynist tradition of the seventeenth century viewed the female sexual difference itself as defective and monstrous. In such a restrictive age, being born a woman itself was considered a deformity; women already faced specific barriers to equality and full participation due to discriminatory factors and being a physically handicapped woman meant double disability. It is in this light that a reader finds powerful female characters Belvideera and Maria, with deviant characteristics and disabilities in Aphra Behn’s The Dumb Virgin or The Force of Imagination (1700).The paper focuses on the representation of disability in this novel through a feminist lens. Behn has redefined the threshold of female identity which has been bound to the corporeal concept since ages in a tenable fashion.

Keywords : Restoration, Misogyny, Marginalisation, Disability and Enpowerment

Aphra Behn’s novel, The Dumb Virgin or The Force of Imagination which was published in 1700, deconstructs the negative stereotypical depiction of disabled women’s position within society. The women characters in this work challenge the seventeenth century patriarchal ideology that belittles women’s social roles and accomplishments as marginal, tainted and defective (Nussbaum 39). This reality was especially true of women with disabilities in the restoration culture where the role of wife and mother was considered any female’s primary one. The Dumb Virgin  was written with a view to deconstruct such negative images and not to campaign or advocate the issues disabled women face.

Discrimination on the basis of disability could be read along the same lines as racism, where the normal able bodied considered themselves ‘whites’ and the disabled ‘black’. Our world is a place of compulsory able-bodiedness that insidiously excludes, stigmatizes and devalues difference (Hobgood 3). The disabled were deemed ‘insufficient’ and ‘inappropriate’ on the basis of their impairment. The ultimate factors defining disability in any particular society were systemic social barriers, negative attitudes and social exclusion. Tobi Siebers rightly states: …the disabled body provides insight into the fact that all bodies are socially constructed- that social attitudes and institutions determine far greater than biological fact the representation of the body’s reality (737).

Does a woman lose her value and become undesirable and ugly because she is deformed? This is the question Behn raises and answers in The Dumb Virgin   or The Force of Imagination  (1700). This work uses one of Behn’s most frequent metaphors for feminity: disability, in the dumbness of Maria and deformity of Belvideera. This representation itself is simultaneously thematised as Maria is presented as beautiful and tempting in her own way. Her stigmatizing deformity cannot lessen her desirability. Maria is not only herself a wondrous piece of Art(Behn 425) but also a great proficient in painting who appropriates and perfects the male gaze by successfully completing a portrait which is abandoned by a painter who is dazzled by her beauty. The deformed sister, Belvideera is presented as a liberated woman – equaling and surpassing men in language and intelligence. The beautiful but speechless Maria, along with her misshapen but witty sister Belvideera in The Dumb Virgin , depict a starkly dichotomized view of the cultural positions women could occupy in a patriarchal world: Sexually desirable as bodies, unmarriageable as minds, either vulnerable to the aggressions of male desire or outspoken and alone (Mintz 1).

In Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1655), Margaret Cavendish opines that we are kept like birds in cages to hop up and down in our houses, not suffered to fly abroad…we are shut out of all power and authority, by reason we are never employed either in civil or martial affairs, our counsels are despised and laughed at, the best of our actions are trodden down with scorn, by the overweening conceit men have of themselves and through despisement of us (qtd. in Walters 21) . Now, considering female disability ; in such an era where women’s role was seen as only within the home and domestic sphere, disabled women were nearly an invisible element and their issues were treated as not of real relevance- only a sideline and not worthwhile . Disabled women were neither expected to be married nor were they visualised earning a living for themselves. They were regarded as a potential burden and often grew up with low self esteem and a negative self image. Families often failed to provide the required emotional support. So they remained neglected in a society which gave hierarchy to men’s needs; considered women’s education and well being as unnecessary luxury; and judged her solely by her physical appearance. She was under-represented and ‘found’ wanting in appearance in comparison to the conventional stereotypes of beauty in her culture. As a result, many disabled women came to consider themselves as non persons, with no rights or privileges to claim, no duties or functions to perform, no aim in life to achieve, no aptitudes to consult or fulfill (Shah 28).

Education and family support are powerful tools of empowerment and it is made accessible to the sisters by their father Rinaldo. He did not cloister his daughters; instead he nurtured their strengths, leading them to recognize their defects as a part of being human and no less than other humans. Physically deformed Belvideera was encouraged to develop a keen wit and mastery over languages. The mute Maria was developed into an extraordinary painter and skilled sign language user. In her muteness, she is encouraged to develop a language because speechlessness would have been associated with lack of language development and, therefore, with intellectual impairment (Kavanaugh).

The disabled women characters in Behn are ones who have identified inequality in the way they are being treated and are fully equipped to stand against any oppression. They are women who arm themselves to overcome any barriers to communication, to movement, to contact with others or any limits to interaction. The comprehension of ‘disabled’as‘differently abled’ may be a twentieth century jargon, but it was practically proved and explored by Behn as early as in the seventeenth century. Belvideera and Maria are women who are unperturbed by the pressure of social stigma. Behn encourages diversity and celebrates ‘difference’ through these characters. They have firmly fixed identities and are fully embodied women- vulnerable and strong at the same time. The characters advocate building self esteem, leadership and capacity without the supportive structure of any organization or movement behind them. They metaphorically open the doors on a fresh change and perception. Behn allusively allows readers to create a broader picture of the period’s attitudes and constructs regarding disability and the ways in which these impacted the lived experiences of disabled people (Southgate).

The seventeenth century connotation of unusual physical form or disability as ‘lusus naturae’ which means ‘nature’s joke’ is highlighted in the misconceptions about a woman’s disability being inherited by her children. It was believed that a woman’s womb and mind were intrinsically linked, mainly because females were considered to be deviant both in body and intellect. In the beginning of the narrative itself the birth of dysfunctional children is ascribed to the mother’s state of mind during the gestation. Behn sardonically suggests the currency of superstitious beliefs about women’s bodies and the mysterious relationship between their cognitive process and reproductive functions. Emily Bowles points out how Belvideera and Maria’s inverted and complementary traits both implicate their mother through their defects , while also speaking to the (imagined) power that medical discourses can have in constructing disabilities, feminity and female sexuality (qtd. in Southgate). The medical notion of female defectiveness and the role alleged of female imagination in the consumption of physically impaired children (how a woman’s mental instability could instigate deformed fetuses) is turned to satire in the hands of a writer like Behn.

Behn deals with the outlook that women with disabilities are vulnerable to abuse in many forms- physical, sexual, emotional and psychological, but, the main aspect of empowerment for disabled women lies in the acceptance of their limitations and disabilities. This acceptance is what helps the disabled characters, Belvideera and Maria to develop self image and self confidence. They have found their own outlets to express their sexuality and claimed their freedom of expression. The atmosphere of anxiety, embarrassment, fear and discomfort normally associated with disabled women are substituted with confidence, power, intelligence and eloquence by the author.

Emily Bowles in her essay Maternal Culpability in Fetal Defects: Aphra Behn’s Satiric Interrogations of Medical Models re-reads the stigmatized early modern body through an exploration of Aphra Behn’s fascination with the intersection of sexuality and disability. Drawing on Aristotelian and Galenic models of human sexuality, organs and gendered traits, Bowles shows how Behn literalizes the relationship between defect and femaleness by satirizing contemporary social and scientific discourses that showcase her awareness of the limitations that her contemporaries’ understanding of gender, sex and sexuality placed on women’s bodies via representation of the slippages between desirability and disability (Hobgood, 16).

Through her disabled characters Behn deconstructs the corporeal or physiognomic view of women. Instead, she portrays the body and mind as distinct entities which combine to make a person’s ‘whole’ human existence. In the words of Snyder and Mitchel, Behn’s use of females with deviant characteristics provides an example of how characters with a disability can serve an author as a narrative device harboring both broad and particular metaphors(62).

Disability denies both personhood and gender to Belvideera as a kid. In the initial pages of the story, she is referred to as it because of her strange form. The early part of the narrative may seem to capitulate and advocate the attribution of physical defect to the management of a woman’s mind. But as the narrative progresses, the limelight falls on Belvideera and Maria who counter the word ‘disabled’. A durable and witty Belvideera represents an alternative code of values for women, a code that gives priority to intelligence and minimizes the social fixation of associating a woman’s identity with the male